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The Big Flocker – Pranks About D&D Terrain Taken Too Far

A few years back one of our contributors, J, introduced me to the world of terrain building. More specifically; how to build tabletop battlegrounds for Dungeons and Dragons from scratch. Like anything else in the world of miniatures, crafting custom set-pieces takes time, materials, and effort.

Given that my spirit-animal is a soggy beanbag chair, my natural instinct is to find the cheapest, laziest shortcut possible. That is how I found my one true love–Flocking.

Google Images / MFwars.com / Youtube

Pictured above is a damn fine example of good terrain building, using a technique known as “Flocking.”

In a nutshell flocking is the practice of sprinkling powdered green styrofoam over wet adhesives to get that freshly-mowed grass texture in miniature scale. It can be applied to a variety of porous materials. It blends effectively with fake rocks or ruins. And it brings vibrancy to your gaming table. The picture above is how to do it right.

This…

…is how to be a complete tool about it. When I saw the versatility and appeal of Flocking–of rolling green hills and lush fields on the gaming table–I immediately set to ridiculing it.

At first my goal was small. Humble. Less exhaustive. I had initially planned to make a few joke terrain models and post them to scratch-building forums. I would then troll the forums by feigning hurt feelings and outrage whenever someone failed to see the brilliance in my flocking. You don’t think my spray-painted trash is amazing? You’re a bully. Don’t know how a hubcap could be considered a game-piece? You’re a gaming elitist, and you’re poverty-shaming me.

My plan, eventually, was to post the results here. However, when we decided not to pay for another year for Statbonus.com, my initial goal expanded and turned a sickly shade of green.

When our sister site was slated to be taken offline this April I leapt into action. I had a perfect, beautiful vision of one of our readers (much like yourself) sitting down to check their blog feed. And when they clicked that tiny potion-bottle Statbonus icon to catch up on nerd culture, gaming, and history, they would instead be greeted with hideous green etsy flops and Zapp Brannigan-levels of brag about the creative process.

So my vision went, and so I made it reality, with the help and advice of our Statbonus writers.

That’s right. For our loyal, loving readers who have been with us since the site launched last year, we left them not with a tearful farewell or best wishes for the future. We left them with the fizzle and pop of utter madness and niche-within-niche nerd culture giggles.

We flocked trash–literal trash–and called it art. Each piece of down-cycled rubbish was accompanied with comments and brags about how much effort went into the project, and how “challenging” and “rewarding” the artistic process can be. There are also stories about how each piece of junk was acquired. Like great-great-great grandpa’s handsaw getting flocked into ugly uselessness to honor his memory. Or how stealing car rims isn’t a crime if it’s being used for art.

Hey there Flockers! This week I wanted to discuss my newest creation–The Rim! I was inspired by a project I saw on etsy where a young, hip couple had decorated their apartment with hubcaps. Anything worth doing to an apartment is worth flocking vigorously. And I remembered seeing some nice hubcaps on the car in the abandoned lot near my house, so I gave it a go!

In our fake articles we beg readers to “like and subscribe” after we’ve removed the like and subscribe links, and we make references to Youtube channels that don’t exist. We end every sentence with an exclamation (or three) especially when they’re not necessary!!!

Oh, and we have real, authentic, beautiful terrain made by professionals and sent to us from the Reaper Forums. And we shame and ridicule the hell out of them.

All this is my way to say goodbye to Statbonus in grand, pants-on-head, pooptuba, flying circus, bugnuts style. And you can personally perpetuate the prank by leaving ridiculous comments, curses, or genuine ruminations of any kind in these posts.

I’d encourage you to praise the trash and ridicule the genuine art to keep our joke going, but it’s entirely up to you. This is our viking funeral for an experimental cooperative blog about tabletop gaming, and we’re burning this baby down to the waterline before it sinks.

I’d like to extend a special thanks to our early contributors to Statbonus; OP Rob, J, Kay Cowl, and Gregory from World Engineer. You guys are awesome, and you made this experiment entertaining and enlightening.

Check back here next week at MasksOfMonsters for more lies and nonsense, and in the weeks to come for more guest posts.